The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
In many regions, internet service underperforms relative to the amount of content consumption that is desired. That is, many areas of the country and around the world do not have sufficient high-speed internet access. For example, dial-up, DSL, or satellite are examples of service that may not provide adequate speed or economical capacity to support the downloading of high quality of video content or other large forms of data in a timely or economic manner. Over-the-top (OTT) video services are becoming increasingly commonplace in the United States market and elsewhere. OTT service provides an attractive alternative to traditional cable bundles. However, many consumers in rural areas do not have sufficient broadband connectivity to support viable over-the-top or data intensive service. Providing a cost competitive alternative to OTT video and data delivery for rural customers is desirable.
A large number of people are dropping traditional cable television service in favor or over-the-top services. This contributes to the volume of data used to watch videos. Nearly half of the approximately 125,000,000 households in the United States now subscribe to at least one video streaming service. By one estimate, the amount of traffic attributable to the most popular video services such as Netflix®, Amazon Prime Video® and iTunes® together account for more than 40% of all peak internet traffic in the U.S. Another 18% is attributable to YouTube®. Ultra-high definition (UHD) content is also beginning to appear on the market. Thus, the increase in internet traffic is expected to grow for the foreseeable future. For Netflix® service, a 5 Mbps is recommended for HD content. However, for ultra-high definition content, a 25 Mbps connection is recommended. Ultra-high definition streams may consume up to 7 GByte per hour.
Rural Americans have limited ability to access on-demand video content because of the lack of infrastructure. Mobile subscribers also find that their service cannot affordably support video streaming to a television. Customers who rely on over-the-top entertainment use expensive fixed broadband services due to the high volume of data required by and provided to the consumer's device.
Many consumers living in rural areas have few options for watching over-the-top television. Up to 34,000,000 Americans lack access to 25 Mbps service. Two-thirds of those live in rural areas. 20,000,000 Americans lack access to even 10 Mbps service. Satellite and long-loop DSL connections are typically unsuitable for supporting large amounts of video content.
A trend in lower income households is using the mobile device as a means to access video data. However, using a mobile device to access video data is limited by data caps provided by each of the service providers. Because of the high data intensity of a video service, data caps can be easily surpassed. That is, only a few HD movies may cause a family to exceed its mobile broadband data cap.
Other data services are also highly intensive in the use of data. For example, software updates and internet of things (IoT) devices may also consume a large amount of data that are also desired by underserved users.